Slave labor

“ How do the interests of the white race require the restriction of slavery? They say that free labor is dishonored by its 'contact with slave labor. How? The two systems co-exist under our Republic. Look at labor as it exists at the North, the mighty North, the seat of commerce, manufactures, mechanic arts, accumulated wealth, and common schools. Look at the mighty population that fills that vast territory with the hum of its free industry. The toiling millions that constitute the sub-stratum on which this splendid fabric of free society rears its aspiring head! Are they not all freemen? ”

“ I burn with indignation at the men who keep it so. But it is not slave labor. Paupers spin cotton at Manchester, and at Glasgow, say the whigs. Who raises cotton at South Carolina and Mississippi? The spoil of the slave is in our houses. We are a republic, but the only nation of the Christian world whose fields are tilled by chattel slaves. ”

“ Therefore, when the choice exists, to employ at an equal price free or slave labor, the former will be decidedly preferred, because it is regarded as more capable, more diligent, more faithful, more worthy of confidence. — 'The fact is,' says one of her own distinguished citizens, 'slavery is the bane and ruin of one portion of our land, and the advantage of free labor and industry has exalted the other portion. ”

“ The doctrine that there exists an “irrepressible conflict” between free labor and slave labor is as false as it is mischievous. Their true relation is one of beautiful interchange and eternal harmony. ”

“ Now, my own feelings on that subject are not quite so hopeless as here expressed, and it seems to me that you are not aware of the extent to which free labor may come into competition with slave labor. I know several instances, in the most slaveholding states, in which slave labor has been displaced, and free labor substituted in its stead. The weakness of slavery consists in the expense of the slaves, the great capital to be invested in their purchase before any work can be performed, and the constant danger of loss by death or escape. ”

“ Why do slave masters keep slaves? To get labor out of them—and to get money by their labor—and to gratify their affections and appetites by money. They keep slaves to please themselves and to pamper their families—God and their neighbor, in this relation, are as nought to them.
Why do people use slave produce? To please themselves and their company! The cry of the laborer, whose wages are kept back by fraud and force, has gone up to God against it. ”

“ In the first settlement of a country, when labor is scarce and dear, slavery may give a temporary impulse to improvement; but even this is not the case, except in warm climates, and where free men are scarce and either sickly or lazy; and when we have said this, we [Pg 74] have said all that experience in the United States warrants us to say, in favor of the policy of employing slave labor. ”

“ What, though he is often compelled to toil in midday while the very earth is melting with fervent heat, and while the negro slave is resting from his work, still his labor is dignified and honorable, because it is free; and although commerce may languish, and manufactures go into decay, and the wages of labor fall, and the price of provisions increase, yet he can hush the mutterings of discontent and still the gnawings of hunger by the one proud, glorious thought — the dignity of labor. ”

“ Wherever slavery exists to any considerable extent, with the exception of some recently settled portions of the country, and which have not yet felt, in a great degree, the baneful and deteriorating influence of slave labor—we hear, at this moment, the cry of suffering. ”

“ Slaveholders and slave-breeders shall be convinced, confuted, convicted, and converted. They shall, in their hearts and consciences, if not with their tongues and pens, bear testimony to the triumphant achievements of free labor. ”

“ Indeed a very brief glance will show that slavery is inconsistent with economy, whether domestic or political.
The slave is bought, sometimes at a very high price; in free labor there is no such investment of capital. ”

“ In periods of commercial revulsion and distress, like the present, the distress, in countries of free labor, falls principally on the laborers. In those of slave labor, it falls almost exclusively on the employer. ”

“ In this chapter, however, let us think of the slave as a laborer, as one who furnished the original great labor force of the new world and differed from modern labor only in the wages received, the political and civil rights enjoyed, and the cultural surroundings from which he was taken. ”

“ When the country shall be filled with inhabitants, and the price of labor shall have reached a minimum, (a comparative minimum I suppose is meant,) free labor will be found cheaper than slave labor. Slaves will then be without employment, and, of course, without the means of comfortable subsistence, which will reduce their numbers, and finally extirpate them. ”

“ The industrial revolution, which was partly financed by the slave trade, eventually abolished the need for slavery. The humanitarian outcry against both the slave trade and slavery which occurred at the end of the eighteenth century and swelled in the early nineteenth century, became a significant force as the need for slave labor diminished. ”

“ Instead of the numberless incentives of the free workman: care for the future, for his family, honor and comfort, the slave is generally moved by one—the fear of ill-treatment, and to this he gradually becomes insensible.415 The division of labor demanded by manufactures, and which is to be found for the most part only where each person is at liberty to choose his own avocation, is scarcely supposable where slavery, in the strict sense of the word, prevails. ”

“ The labor is divided into well-defined crafts. Besides those already mentioned, there are tailors, musicians, architects who are also builders, barbers who also extract teeth, and even manicurists. Slave-labor [Pg 12] is much in demand; for here, as throughout the world, until modern times, wherever agricultural and mechanical industries flourished, slavery has prevailed. ”

“ Before proceeding with these details, I would for one moment expose that degradation of free labor, which is one of the general results. Where there are slaves, whose office is work, it is held disreputable for a white man to soil his skin or harden his hands with honest toil. The Slave-Master of course declines work, and his pernicious example infects all others. ”

“ The white slave had taken from him by indirection what the black slave had taken from him directly and without ceremony. Both were plundered, and by the same plunderers. The slave was robbed by his master of all his earnings, above what was required for his bare physical necessities, and the white laboring man was robbed by the slave system of the just results of his labor, because he was flung into competition with a class of laborers who worked without wages. ”

“ These estates required a larger number of hands for their cultivation than could readily be obtained among the free population, and since the freemen were constantly liable to be called away from their work to serve in the armies, the lands began to be cultivated almost entirely by slave labor. Through war and commerce, slaves could be obtained easily, and at a cheap rate, and their numbers soon became so great, that the poorer class of freemen was thrown almost entirely out of employment. ”

“ A salary must be paid to an overseer to compel the slave to work; the free man is impelled by the desire of increasing the comforts of himself and family. Two hired laborers will perform as much work as three slaves; by some it is supposed to be a more correct estimate that slaves perform only half as much labor as the same number of free laborers. Finally, where slaves are employed, manual industry is a degradation to white people, and indolence becomes the prevailing characteristic. ”

“ The degradation of the idea of labor, which results inevitably from enslaving the working class, operates to a great extent in preventing respectable working men of the middling classes from settling or remaining in slave states. ”

“ This then is another source of antagonism between slave and free institutions.
3d. A third point, not only of difference, but also of antagonism between slave society and free, consists in the permanent contraction or limitation of the field of labor in the former, and its perpetual expansion and multiplication of the branches of industry in the latter. Not only does the slave perform as little work as he can with safety, but besides this, the sphere in which slave [Pg 639] labor can be profitably employed is a limited one. ”

“ It is necessarily improvident and ruinous, because, as a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practise or neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity. The free-labor system conforms to the divine law of equality, which is written in the hearts and consciences of man, and therefore is always and everywhere beneficent.
The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. ”

“ Having neither the will nor the ability to hold slaves themselves, they labor cheerfully while labor is honorable. Make it disgraceful, they will despise it. You can not degrade it more effectually than by establishing a system whereby it shall De performed principally by slaves. The business in which slaves are principally engaged, be it what it may, soon becomes debased in public estimation. It is considered low, and unfit for freemen. Can I better illustrate this truth than by referring to a remark of the gentleman from Kentucky (Clay) ? ”

“ Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope. The power of hope upon human exertion and happiness is wonderful. The slave-master himself has a conception of it, and hence the system of tasks among slaves. The slave whom you cannot drive with the lash to break seventy-five pounds of hemp in a day, if you will task him to break a hundred, and promise him pay for all he does over, he will break you a hundred and fifty. You have substituted hope for the rod. ”

“ I fear the generality of you, who own negroes, are liable to such a charge; for your slaves, I believe, work as hard, if not harder, than the horses whereon you ride. These, after they have done their work, are fed and taken proper care of; but many negroes, when wearied with labor on your plantations, have been obliged to grind their corn after their return home. Your dogs are caressed and fondled at your table; but your slaves, who are frequently called dogs or beasts, have not an equal privilege They are scarce permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall from their master's table ”

“ If the slave refuse to labor, the law will not interfere to compel him. ”

“ Were Slavery abolished, her religion, her morals, her liberties, her general prosperity would be far more secure. The chief source of danger to the integrity of our union, and to our domestic tranquility would be removed; a greater market would be opened for our manufactures, and a wider field for our industry and enterprise; the emancipated slaves would purchase our goods, and our youth could enter into competition with the sons of the South in raising cotton, &c. without becoming slave-holders. Labor would soon cease to be disgraceful; property would accumulate in every part of the land ”

“ The slave-holder claims the slave as his Property. The very idea of a slave is, that he belongs to another, that he is bound to live and labor for another, to be another's instrument, and to make another's will his habitual law, however adverse to his own. ”

“ Ten years I toiled for that man without reward. Ten years of my incessant labor has contributed to increase the bulk of his possessions. Ten years I was compelled to address him with down-cast eyes and uncovered head—in the attitude and language of a slave. I am indebted to him for nothing, save undeserved abuse and stripes. ”

“ The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority. Hence labour was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape. The slave system on our place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people. My old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as I know, ever mastered a single trade or special line of productive industry. ”

“ Then “the labor of slaves is indispensable to their owners, especially on the rich, virgin soils of the Southern States.” “It is sad,” said the semi-apologists, “but so it is. The condition of laboring people everywhere is hard, and we are by no means sure that the condition of the slaves is worse, if so bad as, that of many laborers elsewhere who are nominally free.” “Many masters,” it was added, “are very kind to their slaves; feed them and clothe them well, and never overwork them, unless it is absolutely necessary.” ”

“ But are they not the happiest, most contented people in the world—at any rate, when they are in hospital? I declare that to me the more orderly, methodical, and perfect the arrangements for economising slave labour—regulating slaves—are, the more hateful and odious does slavery become. I would much rather be the animated human chattel of a Turk, Egyptian, Spaniard, or French creole, than the labouring beast of a Yankee or of a New England capitalist. ”

“ The institution of slavery is as ruinous to the white man as to the black.... Three northern servants, engineered by a Yankee boarding-house keeper, would do 119 more work than a dozen of these slaves. The free blacks, who receive wages, do no more than the others. Such is the effect of slavery upon labor. ”

“ To what, sir, is all this ascribable? 'T is to that vice in the organization of society by which one half of its inhabitants are arrayed in interest and feeling against the other half; to that unfortunate state of society in which free men regard labor as disgraceful, and slaves shrink from it as a burden tyrannically imposed upon them. ”